By an antiracist educator, 5-9-2023
(This article adds more examples of US collaboration with the Nazis to those cited in Fighting Fascism, https://multiracialunity.org/2023/04/24/fighting-fascism-from-the-past-to-the-future/).
The book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (2002) by Anthony C. Sutton, documents the collaboration of US industrialists and bankers who bankrolled Germany from the 1920’s through the post-WWI period and then proceeded to assist the Nazis re-arm themselves and prepare for WWII, despite the specific prohibition against re-armament in the Versailles Treaty ending WWI in 1919. The US government did not officially support Hitler and declared war on Germany in December 1941. However, a large number of Wall Street bankers and industrialists did support Hitler in ways that were critical to Germany’s ability to prosecute the war:
- US bankers arranged for loans and capital. JP Morgan arranged for $800 million dollars in loans to Germany ($12.75 billion in modern dollars) through the Dawes plan, with approval of the US government, The loans paid Germany’s WWI reparations to France and were arranged by selling bonds in the US,
- Loans backed the I.G. Farben chemical company and funded the creation of Vereinigte Stahlwerke steel manufacturer. Those two cartels were two of the main armaments manufacturers for the Nazis.
- Major US corporations shared patents and manufacturing methods critical for military purposes with the Nazis. Over 150 US companies had joint ventures in Nazi Germany during WWII, providing critical support to the Nazis to launch and prosecute WWII. https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2019-05-02/ty-article/.premium/researcher-dupont-helped-nazi-germany-out-of-ideology/0000017f-f4c5-d044-adff-f7fd87d30000
- Standard Oil overcame Germany’s lack of oil by sharing its patent on
synthetic gasoline with Germany. Dupont Chemical funded I.G. Farben, which became the largest chemical cartel in the world.
- Dupont funneled to I.G. Farben the patent for Zyclon-B, the gas that exterminated the Jews. Dupont also provided the patent for synthetic rubber. Dupont helped form a joint US-German Company, American IG, that provided financial and technical support to the German I.G. Farben.
- “The I.G. Farben cartel included BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. As documents show, I.G. Farben was intimately involved with the human experimental atrocities committed by Mengele at Auschwitz.”
- I.G. Farben was the only German company in the Third Reich that ran its own concentration camp. At least 30,000 slave workers died in this camp; a lot more were deported to the gas chambers. It was no coincidence that IG Farben built their giant new plant in Auschwitz, since the workforce they used (altogether about 300.000 people) was practically for free. The Zyklon B gas, which killed millions of Jews, Gypsies and other people was produced by IG Farben´s subsidiary company Degesch (https://ahrp.org/auschwitz60-year-anniversary-the-role-of-ig-farben-bayer/).
- US aircraft manufacturers taught the Germans how to build airplanes and how to fuel them with special tetraethyl lead fuel. German General Electric (AEG), a wholly owned subsidiary of US General Electric and US-owned International Telephone and Telegraph, supplied funds and technology to Germany’s communication and electrical infrastructure, support which was critical for the prosecution of WWII.
These US-German companies shared interlocking directorates to actively support each other.
Ideological Support for Nazism
US-German companies provided ideological support. It is important to remember that the US and Britain stayed out of WWII’s European front until the summer of 1943 when they entered Italy and Sicily. The US and Britain invaded northern France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, just as the Soviets were beating the retreating Germans.
By the actions of US and British capitalists, we should suspect agreement with Hitler’s goal of destroying communism in Russia. The Sutton book reveals many forms of ideological support for Nazism in the US and Great Britain.
Hitler came to the attention of Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, in 1922. Throughout Hitler’s rise to power and to the end of WWII, Ford backed him financially and ideologically.
Ideological support for the Nazis is also shown in the fact that half of the Himmler Circle of Friends of the Nazis were American executives or bankers who agreed with the Nazi’s anti-Semitism. They and other capitalist countries, including Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Finland,
tried to crush communism in its infancy in the Soviet Union. They sent troops to support the White Russians in their effort to crush the Soviet Union and take back Russia for the oligarchs from 1918 to 1923.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War
The strategy of US and British capitalists in WWII was to use Hitler to complete the destruction of the new system in the Soviet Union. Hitler was their tool to challenge and defeat communism in its infancy. They built up the German military and economic forces to wage war against the Soviet Union. “Putzi” Hanfstaengl financed the first Nazi newspaper as well as “Mein Kampf.” He was a Harvard Club friend of FDR when FDR was a NY State Senator. FDR studied in Germany as well. The US capitalists used the seal and authority of the United States to promote financial plans for their own pecuniary advantage and political support for anti-communism. In concert with the German capitalists, they formed the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) to control all of the finances of the world. The BIS operated during World War II as a medium through which all the world bankers cooperated.
The NY Times (1978) verifies Sutton’s claims about I.G. Farben and its US backers
https://www.nytimes.com/1978/08/06/archives/with-a-branch-at-auschwitz-farben.html
None of the American financiers of the Nazis was prosecuted as a war criminal. The German financiers were not executed but given prison terms of less than ten years. I.G. Farben executives, unpunished, started new, even larger chemical companies after WWII. Several Jewish financiers of the Nazis, like Oppenheim and Warburg, escaped prosecution.
The statistics on deaths in WWII tell the story of the US and Great Britain holding back and letting the Germans fight the Russians. The US lost 418,500 civilians and military during WWII, the British lost 450,700, and the Soviet Union lost 24,000,000 (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war).
The Germans lost 6.6 to 8.8 million. The US and Britain only entered the European front after it was clear that the Soviets were about to take over Germany and France.
These examples reveal that WWII was a war against communism, NOT a war against fascism.
We need to recognize that a US war against China is a struggle to control world markets, labor, and resources, not a war for democracy!
The Multiracial Unity Blog 